I’m happy to announce that I have accepted an offer to be the North Hall Endowed Chair in the Linguistics of African America and Director of Undergraduate Research at UC Santa Barbara effective July 1st, 2017. I will be responsible for coordinating and overseeing undergraduate research programs for over 20,000 undergraduates at the first Minority-Serving Institution that is also a member of the Association of American Universities. I will also be working in particular to enrich the experiences of UCSB’s over 900 African-American students. I’ll be accepting graduate students with interests in African-American language, culture, and justice to UCSB Linguistics and UCSB Department of Black Studies. Virginia and William & Mary will always be a place that we consider home. California here we come. I’m ready to learn. #GoGauchxs

Call for Vignettes: We’re soliciting vignettes (100 to 500 word written answers) to questions as listed for each chapter of Highest Honors: A Guide to Undergraduate Research. If your vignette is selected for publication in the book, you will receive $100.00 and will be required to sign a release form from Teachers College Press. Your vignette may be edited. You will be able to review the vignette and the chapter that it appears in several times before it goes to press.

Jeree (Harris) Thomas ’08, Attorney for the Just Children Program, will join us for a workshop on how to confront externalized and institutional racism at William and Mary. We will help you understand your rights at William and Mary student as well as state and federal laws concerning the 14th amendment and Civil Rights in Education. Please register here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RestorativeJustice01212014

We know the stories of dolls hanging by nooses, nigger written on dry erase boards and walls, stories of nigger said casually at parties by White students too drunk to know their own names but who know their place well enough to know nothing will happen if they call you out your name, stories of nigger said stone sober, stories of them calling you nigger using every other word except what they really mean to call you, stories of you having to explain your experience in classrooms—your language, your dress, your hair, your music, your skin—yourself, of you having to fight for all…

I am Assistant Professor of English and Linguistics, the William and Mary Professor of Community Studies, and affiliate of the Africana and Women's Studies Programs at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. My book, co-authored with Christine Mallinson, is entitled Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools and is forthcoming from Teachers College Press.